The Scooter Libby farce is over and unless he gets a presidential pardon he’ll be doing some hard time.

The moral of this story is simple: don’t lie - especially under oath.

The mere fact that Libby was on trial was a shame.  He was accused of covering up a non-crime.  Plame’s “outing” did not violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  He wasn’t even the government official responsible for the initial leak.  Richard Armitage, who was working in the State Department, took care of that.

Still, Libby lied under oath and I have no qualms with him being prosecuted for that.  What we can all take from the case is how the Bush administration was eager to discredit skeptics of their policies even if it meant potentially unmasking a covert agent.  That should trouble all of us.  The apparent fact that no laws were broken during the disclosure of Plame’s identity gives ammunition to the right to cast aside the entire inquisition, but I still view the tactics of the Bush administration as abhorrent regardless of legality.

The trial also exposed the media as a willing cog in the political machine, publishing talking points in exchange for access.  It has placed a dark cloud of suspicion over all of their coverage of politics.  The media is, of course, falling all over themselves reporting this conviction.  Their coverage of Sandy Berger, whose actions I view as at least equally damaging as Libby’s, was quite lacking in comparison.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Legal, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.